I’m a little behind on processing all the major events that have happened in the last week. Today is really my first chance to sit and think through all of them.
Last Sunday was the big Spring Concert, the final big event in the music department. In many ways, it was the culmination of my time at BFA, or at least of this semester. For all of us as ensemble directors, this concert is a time to show what our students have learned in the last semester or year. Ensembles represented were Choirs, Bands, Orchestras, Hand Drums, and Guitar Class.
This semester’s guitar class wasn’t the fastest moving class I’ve had, but they managed to pull together a solid performance. The audience’s favorite was “We’re Going to be Friends” by The White Stripes. Last semester’s performance of the Mario Bros. Theme might have been the highlight of my time teaching guitar, but this concert was a solid ending to a class that has worked harder to get where they are.
Intermediate Orchestra sounded fantastic. Their sound had definitely matured since the Christmas Concert. I could hardly believe that some of them have only been playing for 2 years now! The final piece they played was music from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which they performed as a combined piece with high school orchestra. It was exciting and impressive, and we had a fun surprise with pirate hats!
High School Orchestra was able to showcase the incredible talent we had this semester. Most of the group stayed constant from first to second semester, although we gained a couple strong players (including our only high school violist). This meant that not only did we have talented students in the group, we also had the advantage of continuity, the ability for the group to grow together throughout the year.
The first piece was “Lord of the Rings” with some musicians from Intermediate Band. Lord of the Rings has melodies reminiscent of English folk tunes, so the next selection was an actual English folk song called “The Turtledove.” It is a goodbye song. When I was in high school playing in the Elgin Youth Symphony, we always played Randy Swiggum’s arrangement of this song as a goodbye to our seniors in our last concert of the year. This year, the high school orchestra continued the tradition by playing my own string arrangement as a goodbye to the seniors, as well as my goodbye to BFA. Here are the lyrics of one of the verses:
Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone
and leave you for a while
Though I go away, I’ll come back again
Though I roam 10,000 miles my dear,
Though I roam 10,000 miles.
After playing Turtledove, Katie Roberts gave me a little goodbye tribute, along with flowers and a beautiful piece of Kandern pottery. I will miss working in this department at BFA!
We ended with two movements of Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” the second and fourth (Waltz and Finale: Tema Russo) One of my cellists, Sunshine, was pushing the tempo. At the end of the piece, we went faster than we had probably ever gone before. Though I was giving him stern looks as he pushed forward, he grinned gleefully at me and the rest of the orchestra as we raced to the end of the piece. After the big Tchaikovsky ending, the whole orchestra was stifling smiles and giggles. They had pulled it off at a fast tempo! People in the audience commented afterwards that it looked like there was some kind of an inside joke within the orchestra.
This orchestra has been my favorite part of this semester. They have been so responsive, so eager, and so willing to learn. They have natural talent, yet they want to grow. They have worked well together as friends, musicians, and brothers and sisters in Christ. I will miss them greatly!
I really have loved teaching here at BFA. My first year, the lessons may have been my favorite part, or perhaps the great variety of jobs I was able to do, such as helping in the dorms. For my second and third years, I would have said the Intermediate Orchestra was my favorite part of teaching here. This year, Guitar class first semester and High School Orchestra second semester were my favorites. What great variety! Only God could have known how much I would have enjoyed teaching all these different ensembles and lessons. I am thanking God yet again for these four years at BFA. He has stretched me and prodded me to grow, and showered this music department with growth of another kind during this time. On top of the growth of a string program, there is the more subtle individual growth of the students throughout this process.
Now, as I prepare to leave, there is a part of me that fears seeing the orchestra diminish in size, or change in some way. Yet it’s not mine. I place it in God’s hands, where it already is and always has been. I am reminded that the orchestra program, whole music department, and indeed the whole school are still in God’s trustworthy control. God gives the growth; I’m happy to have been one of the people watering (see 1 Corinthians 3:5-7).
